Strengthening the research in participatory research

There are numerous and well-documented reasons for using participatory methods in rural development activities. These often require intense involvement of facilitators in communities, necessarily limiting the number of farmers and communities reached by a project. If the objective is empowerment and improving livelihoods in those particular communities then such involvement is acceptable. The ‘research’ involves the participants – individuals and communities – discovering solutions to their problems. However in many cases the facilitators will also have broader research objectives. Many projects have the joint aims of (1) facilitating change among the immediate project beneficiaries and (2) providing evidence for efficient targeting and organization of more wide scale activities. This second aim requires systematic collection of information on technological, institutional or policy changes and the processes that lead to them. This is a typical researcher agenda. However it has to be carried out in the context of a participatory project . Some effort has to be made to ensure that the information collected is relevant beyond the immediate communities in which it is collected. Without this the result may be case studies, the applicability or generalisability of which is completely unknown.